


All the light is never ending, much like you and I;

by lysiabeth



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Falling In Love, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 08:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15637245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lysiabeth/pseuds/lysiabeth
Summary: 10 ways to say "I love you."





	All the light is never ending, much like you and I;

**i.**

Roy’s apartment is messy, with months old junk in piles all around and nicknacks from all over tucked into any place they’ll fit. The coffee machine buzzes, it’s one of those sleek new ones that Dinah had gifted him when he’d moved back home.

Jason taps his fingers on the counter, waiting for the second shot of coffee to finish, pouring milk in one cup and a spoonful of sugar in the other. How funny, he thinks. The Red Hood of Gotham making coffee in the morning along with all the other adults waking up and getting ready for the day.

An arm slinks around Jason from behind, a kiss to the back of his head lingering but sweet.

“God, I love you. Thank you.” Roy says, soft and heavy and right under Jason’s ear, and Jason squeezes his elbow with his hand, pulling his cup up to his lips so he doesn’t slip up and ruin this moment in any way.

 

 

**ii.**

They’re in a bar, fingers tingling from the effects of the alcohol. Jason has one leg slung over Roy’s thigh and the other one firm on the ground, a small smile on his face as he   
watches one of the girls they’d helped out earlier in the night try to explain the rules of some ancient Chinese board game she’d learnt long ago.

They’re in a bar, and the drinks are slowing down but still coming, and for once in a long time Jason doesn’t feel the weight that sticks in his chest like tar, as Roy laughs at some joke from the bar man.

“I already have someone, and I love him.” Roy says, his laughter dying off as the conversation continues, but Jason feels his heart swell, the sound of Roy’s laughter and the ‘ _ I love him _ ’ crystal clear even through the fog of the alcohol, and he spends the rest of the night watching this boy who he thinks he may love too, but is too afraid to say it back just in case.

 

 

**iii.**

He’s hurting all over, his thigh on fire, and there are people yelling but nothing is coming into focus, Jason too busy focusing on trying to even out his breathing so he doesn’t get a panic attack on top of bleeding out.

Hands cover his, sliding through the blood and torn up fabric, rough fingers accidentally tugging at the edges of the wound. Jason bites down on a yell and Roy’s face is in front of his, eyes wide and cheeks flushed.

“I need… We need to stop the bleeding. I’m sorry, Jaybird, this might hurt a bit.” Roy says, pulling his hands back just for a moment, but Jason grabs onto Roy’s pinky finger like it’s   
a lifeline.

“’s okay… I trust you.” He says, his voice thick but raw, and the look Roy gives him before he blacks out is one he hopes he can remember forever.

 

 

**iv.**

He’s put on bed rest for the better half of one week, slowly making his way through the dire selection of movies on a hard drive he had borrowed from Dick without strictly asking,   
twitchy and restless but mostly lucky for the boy who still comes home to him every night and ruffles his hair and gives him shit but also looks at him like he hung the moon.

Jason tries to swallow down that what he wants to scream;  _ I love you, don’t ever leave me, how could someone like you ever want anyone like me? _

They’re sat on the couch this time, Jason’s leg propped up on a coffee table Jason doesn’t want to know the origin of, Roy sat on the other side of the couch with his feet tucked under   
him and his full attention on the TV.

Jason reaches out his hand and Roy immediately slips his fingers around his, a thumb rubbing against the dip where Jason’s wrist ends.

“Thank you.” Jason says, his voice strong and his grip stronger. He hopes that Roy understands what he’s saying, that it’s more than just the words he’s saying, and he’s starting to think he does when Roy’s eyebrows furrow together, his lips opening to say something back.

Someone knocks on the door and the moment shatters, Roy dropping Jason’s hand to get some cash to pay for the pizza he’d delivered. It’s not until hours later while Jason is drifting off to sleep when Roy says “You’re welcome.”

 

 

**v.**

It’s at that stage of their relationship been so many months that most other people would give a vague answer to the question “ _ so how long have you two…? _ ”, but Jason knows how long it’s been to the day that he entered Roy’s apartment and never really left. There’s a box of his favourite cereal in the cupboard and the drawers in Roy’s bedroom are no longer separated into Jason and Roy.

Roy passes by him as Jason stands in the living area, a frown on his face as he reads the text from Dick, and his hand slaps on Jason’s shoulder, pulling all the way across his back and down the other arm. It makes Jason shudder and he feels it for the rest of the day, and he remembers that he never said goodbye that morning; wonders if he’ll get the second chance.

 

 

**vi.**

“You know you can tell me anything, right?” Roy asks, some hours after Jason’s most recent blow out with his family that left him with anger to burn and an empty stomach, all because Bruce had to open his big mouth before dinner because it would kill him to not say something critical about Jason for once in his life.

‘ _ You know you can tell him anything, right? _ ’ The little voice in his head asks, as Jason looks to Roy as he turns his head away from the Gotham skyline, the wind whipping through his hair and whistling in his ears, Roy looking at him with a raw and open expression.

Pleading.

“Yeah, Harper. I know.” Jason says, fumbles with the lighter he’d found earlier that day just for something to do with his hands that won’t stop trembling, and he hates how his heart shatters when Roy places his hand over the plastic and his fingers and just holds on, like he knows that if he let’s go Jason probably won’t ever reach back.

 

 

**vii.**

He remembers months ago, when he and Kory had been waiting around for Roy to finish up in some convenience store, sitting in a car Jason had hotwired in some town none of them could remember the name of.

It was hot, Jason’s t-shirt stuck to him with sweat, but Kory was simply lying in the back of the car with her legs out the window, her hair off her face in a messy bun tied with a hair tie she’d stolen from Roy a few days before, singing some tune they’d caught the tail end of outside a bar about a week ago.

Roy opens the door to the driver’s seat and chucks a bottle of cold water in Jason’s direction, the bottle landing in the space between his thighs. Kory reaches her hand out for the food she’d asked Roy to grab and Jason pauses before taking a sip of water to roll the cool bottle down his neck, groaning a little with the sensation.

“God, I love you.” Jason says, clenches the bottle hard when he realises what he had said, heart hammering.

He doesn’t know where that comes from. Roy just grins at him and makes a joke about how they only keep him around because he’s the only one who can go into stores unnoticed, and then he’s starting the ignition and driving off.

Jason hopes Roy hadn’t thought he meant it.

Jason tries to convince himself he didn’t mean it.

 

 

**viii.**

Roy is looking at him like he’s seen a ghost, and maybe that’s not a bad analogy, because the last time it had been such a hands on deck shit show some of them never had made it back, and that gnaws on Jason’s mind as he checks his hand gun for a second time.

Roy’s shocked face turns to a nervous smile as he catches Jason’s eye - cautious, approaching. Something behind them explodes and the moment changes again.

“I love you.” Roy says, but it sounds like a question, and Jason doesn’t know it then but Roy is desperate to hear Jason say it back, and him choosing to put on his mask without so much as a nod of acknowledgement drives something sharp through Roy’s heart as much as it does Jason’s.

What Roy doesn’t know is Jason was desperate to say it back too, but for someone praised for how good he was with the English language, he couldn’t find the words to express ‘ _ I love you, you are my my heart, please be careful. _ ’

 

**ix.**

It’s early and Roy’s apartment is silent, and Jason stands in one corner of the room and looks at the bed with a blank face once he’s spent too long getting dressed in the dark. His stomach is churning, that lead weight trying to pull him back into bed with the boy still sleeping there, but he stops himself.

Roy looks peaceful, lips open slightly and hair messy around the pillow, sheet low on his hips and arms tucked around himself.

“I love you.” Jason says, his voice cracking. 

He’s not sure if he says it to remind Roy or himself.

 

 

**x.**

His world is on fire and he’s exhausted, frustration and despair bleeding out of him more than his actual blood. Roy is with him as he drags himself to the his most destitute of safe houses, sits on the toilet seat as Jason stands under the weak stream of too hot water in the shower, stands two steps back as Jason patches himself up and stands in the dark.

His world is on fire and there’s nothing left, because Artemis is gone and Bizzaro is too and Bruce doesn’t love him anymore, Jason isn’t even sure if he ever did, and maybe the reason he didn’t fight back is because Jason has been asking himself for some time now what he’s even fighting for.

His world is on fire and Roy is sitting on his couch, silent, fighting his own war inside of him, so much gone unsaid that needs to be, but all Jason can do is turn to him and sigh.

“I love you.”

His world is on fire but Jason thinks there might be one good thing left in the way Roy smiles up at him, small but genuine, and tells him he loves him back.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song 'sjamboksa' by gang of youths.


End file.
